Social work is a profession that is very much part of and contributes to an ever changing and evolving society. It is therefore essential that social work is able to respond to the diverse and dynamic demands that it may encounter in that society and in the future. The critique of social work is, however, present and growing. The profession can no longer deny or ignore the need to legitimize its value and effectiveness. In this article, a research project – entitled Procivi – aimed at developing a method of legitimizing social work is presented. The method developed in Procivi proposes a way of legitimizing social work through the development of reflective professionals. The method teaches professionals to take a research frame of mind towards their own practice and helps them develop a vocabulary to describe their work to different audiences. The paper discusses whether and how this method forms a viable way of legitimizing social work and as such could be an alternative for the growing demand for social work based on scientific evidence (evidencebased practice, EBP).
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The model of the Best Practice Unit (BPU) is a specific form of practice based research. It is a variation of the Community of Practice (CoP) as developed by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) with the specific aim to innovate a professional practice by combining learning, development and research. We have applied the model over the past 10 years in the domain of care and social welfare in the Netherlands. Characteristics of the model are: the interaction between individual and collective learning processes, the development of (new or better) working methods, and the implementation of these methods in daily practice. Multiple knowledge sources are being used: experiential knowledge, professional knowledge and scientific knowledge. Research is serving diverse purposes: articulating tacit knowledge, documenting the learning and innovation process, systematically describing the revealed or developed ways of working, and evaluating the efficacy of new methods. An analysis of 10 different research projects shows that the BPU is an effective model.
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Inmiddels weten we dat veel patiënten geen op onderzoeksresultaten gebaseerde zorg krijgen of zorg krijgen die overbodig of zelfs potentieel schadelijk is. Ondanks deze kennis is minder bekend hoe deze internationaal bestaande kloof tussen onderzoek en de verpleegkundige praktijk te overbruggen is. Gebruikelijke implementatiestrategieën die deze kloof proberen te dichten, zijn vaak gericht op de individuele professional en minder vaak op de sociale omgeving of de context waarin de verpleegkundige werkzaam is. In het proefschrift van Gerda Holleman probeert zij meer inzicht te krijgen in de rol die de context heeft bij het implementeren van evidence-based practice (EBP) in de verpleegkundige praktijk. Ze maakt een onderscheid tussen drie elementen in de sociale context: de professionele verpleegkundige beroepsorganisaties, de verpleegkundige opinieleider (een gerespecteerd persoon in een gezondheidszorgorganisatie die innovatiekennis heeft en gemotiveerd is implementatie tot een succes te maken) en de verpleegkundige teams.
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Due to the increase in the number of elderly and people seeking medical care, the hotel market with a blend of care and leisure experiences is expected to grow in the future (Han, 2013; Karuppan & Karuppan, 2010; Laesser, 2011). The role of care hotels as an intersection between the care and the tourism sectors makes a vacation in a care hotel an interesting social practice to study. In this contribution a social practices approach (Spaargaren, 1997) is applied to investigate how demand and supply interact during a care hotel vacation. Semi-structured interviews are used to identify successful and less successful interactions or practices between senior guests and personnel in five Dutch care hotels. These interactions are related to materials (care and leisure facilities), competences (skills and empathy of the personnel) and meanings (motivations and aspirations of guests) in the care hotel practice (see Shove et al., 2012). The results show that a social practice approach combined with a qualitative research method may be more suited to analysing the complex encounters between guests and personnel during care hotel vacations than more traditional theories from service or experience quality studies. Simultaneously, this study makes clear that we need to develop alternative qualitative (and/or quantitative) research methods to study more privacy-related or intimate practices or rituals as in the case of care hotels.
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Praktijkonderzoek over integratie van practice based evidence en evidence based practice, nderzoeksresultaten toepassen in de praktijk,verbeteren in en door de praktijk.
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Design academics struggle in effectively reaching out to design practice, while design practitioners have difficulties in appropriating academic output. In their turn, design practitioners create new local knowledge that may not be recognised (as such) by design academics. This situation is seen as suboptimal and problematised as the research-practice gap. This paper addresses how knowledge exchange between design research and practice can be understood and improved. We therefore introduce and investigate a social co-design case study which bridged the gap between research and practice and which shows how knowledge development within academia, professional design practice, and non-professional design practice are interwoven. We analyse the case through an alternative template analysis incorporating four perspectives on ‘the gap’: abstraction, communication, alignment of knowledge needs, supporting local knowledge production. We compare and interrelate these four perspectives. This refines our theoretical understanding of the research-practice gap and provides implications and actionable insights about practitioner-centred knowledge production for design academics who want to contribute to design practice.
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Symposium ESWRA - ECSWR 2016: empirical ethics in social work. Objective: ethical aspects of social work (esp. at home) Structure: cooperation of the research group of UAS Utrecht Netherlands with six regional welfare organizations Method: practice based ethics research Focus on professional practice: learning from moral experiences in frontline practice (cf. Van Doorn, 2008) Hybrid approach: combining theoretical resources and professional practice (cf. Banks & Gallagher, 2009) Mixed methods: desk research, interviews, best practice units (BPU), development of ethical tools
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Objectives: This study assesses social workers’ orientation toward the evidence-based practice (EBP) process and explores which specific variables (e.g. age) are associated. Methods: Data were collected from 341 Dutch social workers through an online survey which included a Dutch translation of the EBP Process Assessment Scale (EBPPAS), along with 13 background/demographic questions. Results: The overall level of orientation toward the EBP process is relatively low. Although respondents are slightly familiar with it and have slightly positive attitudes about it, their intentions to engage in it and their actual engagement are relatively low. Respondents who followed a course on the EBP process as a student are more oriented toward it than those who did not. Social workers under 29 are more familiar with the EBP process than those over 29. Conclusions: We recommend educators to take a more active role in teaching the EBP process to students and social workers.
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The aim of this exploratory study was to assess whether practicing social workers currently enrolled in Master Social Work (MSW) programs (hereafter referred to as MSW students) were more oriented to the evidence-based practice (EBP) process and more engaged in it than practicing social workers who are not currently enrolled in MSW programs (hereafter referred to as social workers) in the Netherlands. Data were collected from MSW students (n = 32) and from social workers (n = 341) using the EBP Process Assessment Scale. MSW students reported a stronger orientation toward the EBP process, more positive attitudes toward EBP, more familiarity with EBP and more intentions to engage in EBP than social workers did, however, they were less positive about the feasibility of implementing EBP in practice. These preliminary results suggest that there are grounds for optimism about MSW students’ acceptance of and engagement in the EBP process. Implications for social work education are discussed.
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